Content caching networks like Information-Centric Networking (ICN) are beneficial to reduce the network traffic by storing content data on routers near to users. In ICN, it becomes an important issue to manage system resources, such as storage and network bandwidth, which are influenced by cache characteristics of each cache node. Meanwhile, cache aging techniques based on Time-To-Live (TTL) of content facilitate analyzing cache characteristics and can realize appropriate resource management by setting efficient TTLs. However, it is difficult to search for the efficient TTLs in a distributed cache system connected by multiple cache nodes. Therefore, we propose an adaptive control mechanism of the TTL value of content in distributed cache systems by using predictive models which can estimate the impact of the TTL values on network resources and cache performance. Furthermore, we show the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.

In this paper, we posit that extension of SDN to support deeply and flexibly programmable, software-defined data plane significantly enhance SDN and NFV and their interaction in terms of (1) enhanced interaction between applications and networks, (2) optimization of network functions, and (3) rapid development of new network protocols. All of these benefits are expected to contribute to improving the quality of diversifying communication networks and services. We identify three major technical challenges for enabling software-defined data plane as (1) ease of programming, (2) reasonable and predictable performance and (3) isolation among multiple concurrent logics. We also promote application-driving thinking towards defining software defined data-plane. We briefly introduce our project FLARE and its related technologies and review four use cases of flexible and deeply programmable data plane.

This article introduces a self-organizing model which builds the topology of a DHT mapping system for ICN. Due to its self-organizing operation and low average degree of maintenance, the management overhead of the system is reduced dramatically, which yields inherent scalability. The proposed model can improve latency by around 10% compared to an existing approach which has a near optimal average distance when the number of nodes and degree are given. In particular, its operation is simple which eases maintenance concerns. Moreover, we analyze the model theoretically to provide a deeper understanding of the proposal.

This paper presents an optimal cooperative routing protocol (OCRP) aiming to improve the in-network cache utilization of the Content-Centric Networking (CCN). The objective of OCRP is to selectively aggregate the multiple flows of interest messages onto the same path in order to improve the cache utilization while mitigating the cache contention of the Content Stores (CSs) of CCN routers on the routing path. The proposed routing protocol consists of three processes: (1) Prefix Popularity Observation; (2) Prefix Group (Un)Subscription; and (3) Forwarding Information Base (FIB) Reconstruction. Prefix Popularity Observation observes the popularly cited prefixes to activate a prefix group (un)subscription function, which lets the Designated Router (DR) know which requester router wants to either join or leave a prefix group. Prefix Group (Un)Subscription lets the DR know which requester router is demanding to join or leave which prefix group. FIB Reconstruction reconstructs the FIB entries of the CCN routers involved in the newly computed optimal cooperative path of all prefix groups. The optimal routing path is obtained by binary linear optimization under a flow conservation constraint, cache contention mitigating constraint, and path length constraint. Two metrics of server load and round-trip hop distance are used to measure the performance of the proposed routing protocol. Simulation results from various network scenarios and various settings show advantages over the shortest path routing and our previously proposed cooperative routing schemes.

As a promising future network architecture, Information-centric networking (ICN) has attracted much attention, its ubiquitous in-network caching is one of the key technologies to optimize the dissemination of information. However, considering the diversity of contents and the limitation of cache resources in the Internet, it is usually difficult to find a one-fit-all caching strategy. How to manage the ubiquitous in-network cache in ICN has become an important problem. In this paper, we explore ways to improve cache performance from the three perspectives of spatiality, temporality and availability, based on which we further propose an in-network cache management strategy to support differentiated service. We divide contents requested in the network into different levels and the selection of caching strategies depends on the content level. Furthermore, the corresponding models of utilizing cache resources in spatiality, temporality and availability are also derived for comparison and analysis. Simulation verifies that our differentiated service based cache management strategy can optimize the utilization of cache resources and get higher overall cache performance.

Due to limitations of today's widely-deployed commercial networks, some end-user applications are only possible through, or greatly improved by execution on virtualized networks that have been enhanced or idealized in a way which specifically supports the application. This paper describes US Ignite and the advantages provided to US Ignite end-user applications running on virtual networks which variously: (a) minimize latency, (b) minimize jitter, (c) minimize or eliminate packet drops, (d) optimize branch points for multicast packet duplication, (e) provide isolation for sensitive information flows, and/or (f) bundle network billing with application use. Examples of US Ignite applications in these categories are provided.

We propose TagFlow, a data plane mechanism for classification in Software-Defined Networking (SDN). We first argue that simple field-matching proposals of current SDN APIs are not efficient and flexible enough and then propose a tag based classification mechanism as an alternative. Moreover, we propose user-defined actions as an improvement over current hardcoded actions in SDN APIs. Our experiments show TagFlow forwarding is almost 40% faster than OpenFlow. Furthermore, our user-defined actions at SDN southbound are thousands of times faster that equivalent northbound implementations in the literature.

Information-centric networking (ICN) is a promising architecture and has attracted much attention in the area of future Internet architectures. As one of the key technologies in ICN, in-network caching can enhance content retrieval at a global scale without requiring any special infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a workload-aware caching policy, LRU-GT, which allows cache nodes to protect newly cached contents for a period of time (guard time) during which contents are protected from being replaced. LRU-GT can utilize the temporal locality and distinguish contents of different popularity, which are both the characteristics of the workload. Cache replacement is modeled as a semi-Markov process under the Independent Reference Model (IRM) assumption and a theoretical analysis proves that popular contents have longer sojourn time in the cache compared with unpopular ones in LRU-GT and the value of guard time can affect the cache hit ratio. We also propose a dynamic guard time adjustment algorithm to optimize the performance. Simulation results show that LRU-GT can reduce the average hops to get contents and improve cache hit ratio.

The paper presents a survey on OpenFlow related technologies that have been proposed as a means for researchers, network service creators, and others to easily design, test, and deploy their innovative ideas in experimental or production networks to accelerate research activities on network technologies. Rather than having programmability within each network node, separated OpenFlow controllers provide network control through pluggable software modules; thus, it is easy to develop new network control functions in executable form and test them in production networks. The emergence of OpenFlow has started various research activities. The paper surveys these activities and their results.

Software-Defined Networking currently appears to be a major evolution towards network programmability. In this paper, we first analyze the network management capabilities of OpenFlow in order to identify the main challenges that are raised for SDN management. We address current deficiencies of SDN management and suggest solutions that incur research directions to be carried out for the management of enhanced SDN.

The use of computing resources on network is becoming active in the Internet and private networks. OpenFlow/Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is drawing attention as a method to control network virtualization for the cloud computing services and other carrier services. This paper introduces examples of OpenFlow/SDN technologies applied to commercial cloud services. Various activities to expand coverage over commercial carrier networks are also mentioned.

Resource discovery is an essential function for distributed mobile applications integrated in vehicular communication systems. Key requirements of the mobile resource discovery are wide-area geographic-based discovery and scalable resource discovery not only inside a vehicular ad-hoc network but also through the Internet. While a number of resource discovery solutions have been proposed, most of them have focused on specific scale of network. Furthermore, managing a large number of mobile resources in the Internet raises a scalability issue due to the mobility of vehicles. In this paper, we design a solution to wide area geographical mobile resource discovery in heterogeneous networks composed of numerous mobile networks possibly connected to the Internet. The proposed system relies on a hierarchical publish-subscribe architecture and geographic routing so that users can locate resources according to geographical coordinates without scalability issue. Furthermore we propose a location management mechanism for mobile resources, which enables to reduce periodic updates of geographical location. Numerical analysis and simulation results show that our system can discover mobile resources without overloading both mobile network and the Internet.

Overlay networking makes it easy for users add new network functionalities while keeping existing Internet connectivity intact. This paper introduces SCONE (Service-COmposable InterNEt) as a networking service to facilitate the management of service overlay networking. By looking into the structure of programmable overlay nodes, SCONE provides programmable IP service gateways (PSGs) that ensure high-speed per-flow packet processing for overlay networking. In order to meet the data-rate requirements of various host applications, each PSG is accelerated by hardware packet processing for its data plane. It also leverages the space-efficient pattern matching of entity cloning and provides localized (i.e., de-centralized) services to assist the scalable support for software-defined networking (SDN). An experiment result shows that the proposed PSGs can support high-fidelity overlay networking from both performance and scalability perspectives.

Information-centric networking has been touted as an alternative to the current Internet architecture. Our work addresses a crucial part of such a proposal, namely the design of a network node within an information-centric networking architecture. Special attention is given in providing a platform for development and experimentation in an emerging network research area; an area that questions many starting points of the current Internet. In this paper, we describe the service model exposed to applications and provide background on the operation of the platform. For illustration, we present current efforts in deployment and experimentation with demo applications presented, too.

OpenFlow, originally proposed for campus and enterprise network experimentation, has become a promising SDN architecture that is considered as a widely-deployable production network node recently. It is, in a consequence, pointed out that OpenFlow cannot scale and replace today's versatile network devices due to its limited scalability and flexibility. In this paper, we propose OpenQFlow, a novel scalable and flexible variant of OpenFlow. OpenQFlow provides a fine-grained flow tracking while flow classification is decoupled from the tracking by separating the inefficiently coupled flow table to three different tables: flow state table, forwarding rule table, and QoS rule table. We also develop a two-tier flow-based QoS framework, derived from our new packet scheduling algorithm, which provides performance guarantee and fairness on both granularity levels of micro- and aggregate-flow at the same time. We have implemented OpenQFlow on an off-the-shelf microTCA chassis equipped with a commodity multicore processor, for which our architecture is suited, to achieve high-performance with carefully engineered software design and optimization.

Content-centric networking (CCN) is one of candidates being spotlighted as the technologies of the future Internet to solve the problems of the current Internet. Since DoS/DDoS attack is the most serious threat to the current Internet, this letter introduces the possibility of DoS/DDoS attack on CCN for the first time. And we introduce an attack method using fake-request packets and propose countermeasures in order to detect and/or react to CCN DoS/DDoS attack, and then analyze the result of our proposal.

As one innovative research that heavily depends on the network virtualization for its realization and deployment on an Internet-scale, we propose an approach to utilize user resources in information-centric network (ICN). We try to fully benefit from the in-network cache that is one attractive feature of ICN by expanding the in-network cache indirectly based on the user resources. To achieve this, in this paper, we focus on how to encourage users to contribute their resources in ICN. Through simulations, we examine a feasibility of our approach and an effect of user participation on the content distribution performance in ICN. We also briefly discuss how the network virtualization technique can be utilized for our research in terms of its evaluation and deployment.

The propagation of messages among a group of people, which forms opportunistic Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), can be modeled as dynamic graph with links joining every two nodes up and down at a stationary speed. As people in DTN might have different probabilities of sending messages to each other, they should be divided into distinct groups with different link generate speed λ and link perish speed µ. In this letter, we focus on the two-group case, and apply Edge-Markovian Dynamic Graphs to present an analysis framework to evaluate the average delay for the information dissemination in DTN. We also give extensive simulation and numerical results revealing the influence of various parameters.

Dynamic resource management has become an active area of research in the Cloud Computing paradigm. Cost of resources varies significantly depending on configuration for using them. Hence efficient management of resources is of prime interest to both Cloud Providers and Cloud Users. In this work we suggest a probabilistic resource provisioning approach that can be exploited as the input of a dynamic resource management scheme. Using a Video on Demand use case to justify our claims, we propose an analytical model inspired from standard models developed for epidemiology spreading, to represent sudden and intense workload variations. We show that the resulting model verifies a Large Deviation Principle that statistically characterizes extreme rare events, such as the ones produced by “buzz/flash crowd effects” that may cause workload overflow in the VoD context. This analysis provides valuable insight on expectable abnormal behaviors of systems. We exploit the information obtained using the Large Deviation Principle for the proposed Video on Demand use-case for defining policies (Service Level Agreements). We believe these policies for elastic resource provisioning and usage may be of some interest to all stakeholders in the emerging context of cloud networking.

In disaster sites of 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, digital communication was virtually unavailable due to the serious damage to the existing Internet and ICT resources. Thus there were urgent demands for recovering the Internet connectivity and first aid communication tools. This paper describes the design and deployment of networking systems that provide Internet connectivity using 3G mobile links or VSAT satellite links. In this paper we examine two approaches for post-disaster networking: quickly deployable package and on-demand networking. Based on a comparison of their characteristics and deployment experiences, this paper tries to extract lessons that contribute to improving the preparedness to another disaster. This paper also shares our significant operational experience acquired through supporting a maximum of 54 sites in Tohoku area including evacuation shelters, temporary hospitals and local government offices.